Just
in: Asiasat 3 up

The satellite was launched by Russian Strategic Missile Forces,
reported Itar-Tass. The launch, originally scheduled for December 23,
was delayed owing to strong winds. It was the first launch of a
Proton booster ever to have been aborted by weather conditions.
(Asiasat 3 details: Sat-ND, 16./21.12.97.)

Today's launch was the ninth and last in 1997. All of the previous
eight launches had been successful. Proton rockets put into orbit 17
foreign commercial satellites, two Russian military satellites and
the first Russian bank satellite Kupon, commissioned by the Central
Bank of Russia (Sat-ND, 13.11.97.)

Moscow' Khrunichev Space Centre, the maker of the Proton boosters,
has ambitious plans, said Itar-Tass. Twelve commercial launches of
foreign and nine launches of Russian satellites are scheduled for
1998.

USELESS
FACT:One in five of the world's 2.5 million medical
doctors are Russian.

Early
Bird rises

More than year after the originally planned Launch date, Russia
today launched a commercial U.S. imaging satellite from its Far East
cosmodrome in Svobodny.

Early Bird was put into orbit by a Start-1, a converted
intercontinental nuclear missile, at 4:32 p.m. Moscow time (1332
UTC.) The 60-tonnes rocket can loft satellites of up to 650 into low
orbits.

As reported in Sat-ND, 12.12.97, Early Bird will offer a
resolution of down to 3 metres  and the imaging will be
available to anyone with an Internet access and a credit card.
There's more about the complicated launch history of Early Bird in
Sat-ND, 9.12.97.

USELESS
FACT:If NASA sent [real] birds into space they would
soon die -- they need gravity to swallow.

The
Orbcomm octuplets

Orbcomm yesterday launched eight satellites into their target
orbit approximately 800 kilometres above the Earth. In the next few
days, satellite controllers at Orbcomm's Network Control Centre in
Dulles, VA, plan to establish contact with the satellites and begin
the approximately three-month testing and deployment phase.

The
Pegasus XL rocket [have I already mentioned that this sounds like a
condom brand to me?] was fired from Orbital Science's L-1011 carrier
aircraft at an altitude of 13 kilometres. After
a 72-minute flight, the eight Orbcomm satellites were injected into
their target orbit. Following the separation of the last of the eight
satellites, the Pegasus fourth stage completed the planned burn of
the remaining hydrazine fuel. [Important to reduce the risk of
creating unwanted space junk.]

Preliminary indications are that all eight satellites separated
successfully from the Pegasus rocket. Initial communications with the
Orbcomm satellites are proceeding as expected.

1998, Orbcomm will increase the communications availability in the
U.S. from an average of 1½ hours per day to 12 hours per day.
With the planned launch of 18 more satellites in the first half of
1998, Orbcomm will be able to provide near real-time commercial data
and messaging communications to customers in the transportation,
marine, oil and gas, utilities, heavy equipment and defence
industries.

USELESS
FACT:The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter
larger than that of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

LAW
& ORDER

Ka-band
kraze kontinues

Several kompanies have this week filed with the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) for additional chunks of the Ka-band
in order to expand their planned systems.

Too many details aren't available yet. Hughes Electronics, for
example, proposes two extensions to the original Spaceway plans: a
US$2.3 billion system of geostationary satellites kalled Spaceway
EXP, as well as a US$2.4 billion, 20-satellite Spaceway NGSO
(non-geostationary orbit.)

Applications by other kompanies, among them Alcatel Alsthom
reportedly also involve billion-dollar extensions to their systems.
Alcatel reportedly wants to add 96 [!] geostationary satellites to
its Skybridge system at a kost in the US$6 billion range. [No, I
don't really think they do mean 96 geostationary satellites, but
that's how it was reported. Sorry folks.]

Among the other kompanies that want new Ka-band allocations were
Lockheed Martin and TRW, which wants to regain some spectrum is lost
earlier as the result of an unrelated regulatory decision.

"We had always envisioned adding more spectrum to meet market
demand," said Hughes spokeswoman Wendy Greene. Of course, all
that shouldn't be taken too seriously  these are all paper
satellites. Those kompanies secure their frequency chunks just to
make sure no-one else does.

Maybe those plans will be realised, maybe not. What seems to have
happened here is that there is more Ka-band kapacity available, maybe
as the result of the last World Radiokommunications Konference, and
"If there's spectrum out there, you want to gobble up as much as
you can," an analyst was quoted as saying.

USELESS
FACT:The snow carnival scheduled for May 1, 1953, in
Sheridan, Wyoming, was cancelled because of too much snow.

New
broadcasting distribution regulations in Canada

The Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) has
published new Broadcasting Distribution Regulations, to come into
effect on 1 January 1998.

The new regulations, which replace the existing cable television
regulations, apply to all distributors of broadcasting services in
Canada, including cable, MDS and LMCS services, as well as DTH
satellite distributors. In a nutshell:

The new regulations provide equitable opportunities for all
distributors of broadcasting services. As a general rule, new
entrants have to meet the same signal carriage and substitution
requirements that are imposed on existing cable systems.

Access policies to ensure that Canadian pay and specialty
services can reach their intended audiences have now become part of
the regulations. This is particularly important for a number of
licensed Canadian specialty services that have not yet been
launched, since there is currently no channel capacity to
accommodate them. In order to ensure that these services have access
to Canadian distributing systems, the new regulations require that
they be carried on analogue channels by 1 September 1999, or when
distributors have at least 15 percent digital box deployment,
whichever comes first.

All distributors, except for very small systems with less
than 2,000 subscribers, are required to contribute at least 5
percent of their gross annual broadcasting revenues to the creation
and presentation of Canadian programming. The allocation of these
contributions can vary depending on the type and size of the
distribution system involved. For instance, DTH distributors must
allocate all of their contribution to one or more qualifying
Canadian production funds.

In order for consumers to obtain the full benefits of
competition, they must be able to connect cable wiring inside their
premises to the distributor of their choice. The new regulations
require distributors to offer customers the option of purchasing
their inside wire for a nominal fee, when they choose to discontinue
service, in order to allow them to switch to another service
provider.

The CRTC said it considers that these new regulations will
encourage greater competition in the broadcasting distribution
sector, and provide greater regulatory clarity for players in a more
competitive and technologically advanced environment, while ensuring
access by Canadians to Canadian services. The Commission intends to
undertake a general review of the effectiveness and appropriateness
of the new regulations after two years.

BUSINESS

Again:
Al Waleed Alert

"Prince Al Waleed plans to invest in a joint project with
Teledesic to finance and launch a network of satellites that will
transmit voice, data, and the Internet to cover every spot on Earth,"
said the statement from his office in Riyadh, Saudi-Arabia.

According to the statement, Al-Walled met Teledesic CEO Craig
McCaw during a tour of the United States in the last two weeks. It
did not give any details on the prince's planned investment in the
US$9 billion "Internet-in-the-sky" project.

The prince [who has at least US$11 billion more than Al Bundy]
recently said he wanted "to concentrate on
communications, technology, entertainment and news" and bought
into Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Netscape, and Motorola (Sat-ND,
25.11.97.)

USELESS
FACT:A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her
husband doesn't give her coffee.

DIGITAL

Digital
terrestrial TV in Japan delayed

What a surprise: Japan's television networks, both public and
commercial, will launch digital TV services on direct broadcast
satellites (DBS) prior to offering them terrestrially.

According to Kyodo news agency, has signalled it will approve that
plan brought forward by the broadcasting industry. Originally, both
DBS and terrestrial digital TV were due to start in 2000. Broadcaster
pointed out that while the introduction of terrestrial digital TV
would cost more than a trillion yen, it offered less benefits than
digital DBS services.

Kyodo said that public broadcaster NHK is expected to publish a
long-term management plan in January that will already include the
precedence of digital DBS TV over digital terrestrial services.

USELESS
FACT:A family of six died in Oregon during WWII as a
result of a Japanese balloon bomb.

FEEDBACK

Great
Danes

Centuries ago, I wrote that Denmark's first and only pay-TV
sports channel TVS will be shut down at the end of 1997. I guess I
wrote that "the channel had been set up by
Denmark's public broadcasters in co-operation with the Danish
Football [soccer] Association."

Mogens Poulsen wrote in to tell me that

"The main shareholder is the Danish
Telecom, not TV Denmark, which (as you already know -- you were only
testing us!?!) is a number of regional private broadcasters airing
the same programs at the same time -- terrestrial and via satellite.

Hmm... I have to admit that I do live in a place that's
pretty close to Denmark; closer than to any other country in the
world, and under certain ionospheric conditions, I can receive Danish
TV and radio terrestrially. But apart from that I have to admit that
I don't know much about the TV landscape there (neither do I know
about the TV landscape in any other country of the world.)

Okay, but that's Sat-ND: I'll compile all that stuff that's
available out there somewhere in cyberspace. Please don't expect me
to check it out for you, and please don't expect me to have a brain
of my own because I just haven't. My apologies for that; I was born
like that and I just can't help it. Poor me ;-)

USELESS
FACT:There is not a single entry containing the
word "Denmark" in my Useless Facts database, which
currently comprises 2532 items. Er... make that 2533 items.